Michael Ironside may possess one of the most famously intimidating scowls in the history of filmdom, but it doesn’t take long into a conversation with the veteran character actor to get caught up in his enthusiasm.

It’s so pure and endearing that you immediately forget about the darker, nasty characters he is known for.

On this particular day, that enthusiasm is directed toward Amy Jo Johnson’s warm and funny low-budget debut, The Space Between. Known for his cinematic gallery of tough guys and villains, Ironside has a supporting role as a gregarious, love-struck father of a lawyer who returns to her hometown to help her best friend through a family catastrophe.

It’s tempting to call it an against-type turn for the Canadian actor. After all, he is probably still best known for playing roles such as the violent henchman, Richter, in the 1990 sci-fi blockbuster Total Recall; or tough-as-nails Lieutenant Commander Rick (Jester) Heatherly in 1986’s Top Gun; or the antagonist in David Cronenberg’s 1981 classic Scanners, a supernaturally gifted young villain with a talent for telepathically exploding heads.

Yes, he’s played a lot of tough and/or evil guys over the years. But that’s not the whole story.

“Not all of my films are these drooling, misshapen, damaged characters,” Ironside says with a laugh, in a phone interview from his home in Los Angeles. “I try and do that for money for larger projects so I can go off and do things like The Space Between or Knuckleball.”

Knuckleball is the thriller Ironside recently finished in Fort Saskatchewan with Calgary director Mike Peterson. Like The Space Between, it is a low-budget affair with a premise that Ironside thought showed promise. It will likely get a high-profile bump from his involvement, not only from the Toronto native’s considerable talents as a versatile actor, but also from his name and face recognition, which tends to help when it comes to distribution.

He talks about both projects passionately and admits these smaller, personal films are now his preference. The Space Between, which screens Friday as part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, was a labour of love for all involved. It was shot in Ontario for “absolutely no money.” The actors worked for scale and Ironside even turned down a lucrative project in order to fit it into his schedule.

It wasn’t so much the against-type role that attracted him as the writing in general. All of the characters seemed fully developed. Ironside, who began his career as a writer, was so impressed with Johnson’s script that he has now become one of the film’s most ardent cheerleaders. He will be in Calgary on Friday for the CUFF screening.

“I don’t push films if I don’t believe in them,” he says. “I wouldn’t blow smoke up your a–. I don’t give sh–. I’ve been showing off this film because I like it, I really do. ”

The Space Between is a funny and sweet dramedy about a musically inclined go-kart mechanic named Mitch (Michael Cram), who accidentally discovers that his infant daughter is not his own. Crushed, he takes off on a desperate road trip to find the real father. Along the way, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Emily, a troubled teen played by Julia Sarah Stone, who decides to tag along for the journey. Meanwhile, Mitch’s wife Jackie (Sonya Salomma), her mother Dinah (Maria Ricossa), best friend Amelia (Johnson) and Amelia’s father, Nick (Ironside) are among those who hit the road in an attempt to find him and convince him to come back home.

What results is a film that asks big questions about unconditional love, forgiveness and parenting, wrapping it all in a gentle road comedy.

“The script is wonderful,” says Ironside. “It talks about dysfunction. It talks about love gone wrong and the attempts to please people when we’re not true to ourselves and the lack of communication in even the best relationships.”

According to the bio on his website, Ironside was only 12 when he wrote an autobiographical novel that he adapted a few years later into a one-act play called The Shelter. It won a college playwriting contest, which eventually led him to filmmaking and acting. By the early 1980s, he was landing films that often cast him as a heavy, whether it be the villain in Cronenberg’s Scanners, a terrifying misogynistic killer in 1982’s Visiting Hours or a grotesque post-apocalyptic dictator named Overdog in 1983’s low-budget sci-fi film Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. He has been working steadily ever since, showing up in projects of every genre, tone and budget imaginable. He’s worked with acclaimed high-profile directors such as John Schlesinger, Paul Verhoeven, Tony Scott, Walter Hill and Cronenberg and has had recurring roles on popular TV series such as ER and Desperate Housewives.

He still does the big-studio, big-distribution films to keep his name out there, a way to ensure he can still have an impact on distribution when it comes to smaller films. Still, he hasn’t done a studio film in 18 months and recently turned down a couple. It’s the smaller films such as The Space Between that interest him the most.

“I wish there was more of this,” he says. “The studios have been pumping out reworks of blockbusters and films they shouldn’t remake. The landscape is littered with these horribly bulky films that don’t do anything. We need more films like this one.”

At 67, Ironside has survived cancer twice and says he is re-evaluating his life and career, which includes looking for more nuance in his roles and working with “good people on good projects.” Nobody, he says at one point, “wants to go out on a bad note.”

“I’ve have cancer a couple of times, I’ve had joints replaced,” he says. “I’m kind of an old warhorse here. The biggest adventure that is going on in my life right now is finding out who the f–k I really am. Where did I come from? I don’t just mean physically, I mean emotionally, mentally, my belief systems, spiritually — all those things . . . It’s in service of my acting in a funny way. I really do want to seminate where the genesis of stuff is. How can I do less and get more out of it, too? This may be a little esoteric for your article, but I want to know what’s going on inside me.”

The Space Between screens Friday at 6:45 p.m. at the Globe Cinema as part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival. Michael Ironside will be in attendance.

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.